June 9, 2012

Let's see if it makes as much sense as Romney's explanation of "I like being able to fire people," which, actually always made sense if you were allowed to see the whole quote, not clipped short. The explanation was right there in the next sentence: "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me." Romney was using what actually often works great in a speech: a provocative, short, surprising sentence, followed by something that convinces the listener that what sounded counterintuitive is really true.

Keep in mind that the private sector has been hiring at a solid pace over the last 27 months. But one of the biggest weaknesses has been state and local governments, which have laid off 450,000 Americans. These are teachers and cops and firefighters. Congress should pass a bill putting them back to work right now, giving help to the states so that those layoffs are not occurring....

And the most important thing I think we can do is make sure that we continue to have a strong, robust recovery.... We’ve got a couple of sectors in our economy that are still weak. Overall, the private sector has been doing a good job creating jobs. We’ve seen record profits in the corporate sector.

The big challenge we have in our economy right now is state and local government hiring has been going in the wrong direction. You’ve seen teacher layoffs, police officers, cops, firefighters being laid off. And the other sector that’s still weak has been the construction industry.

And here's the way he put it in the question section:

Q What about the Republicans saying that you’re blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies?

THE PRESIDENT: The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

Note the failure to mention the Wisconsin recall and the Scott Walker method of actually getting the budget under control and then not firing people.

So here's the new transcript, where Obama tries to climb out of the hole he dug for himself:

Listen, it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine. That’s the reason I had the press conference. That’s why I spent yesterday, the day before yesterday, this past week, this past month, and this past year talking about how we can make the economy stronger.

The economy is not doing fine. There are too many people out of work. The housing market is still weak and too many homes underwater. And that’s precisely why I asked Congress to start taking some steps that can make a difference.

So far, he's only referring to "the economy" — not the private sector.

Now, I think if you look at what I said this morning and what I’ve been saying consistently over the last year, we’ve actually seen some good momentum in the private sector. We’ve seen 4.3 million jobs created — 800,000 this year alone — record corporate profits. And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy.

That's a repetition of what he said in the original remarks, which he summed up as "the private sector is doing fine."

The folks who are hurting, where we have problems and where we can do even better, is small businesses that are having a tough time getting financing; we’ve seen teachers and police officers and firefighters who’ve been laid off — all of which, by the way, when they get laid off spend less money buying goods and going to restaurants and contributing to additional economic growth.

Here there's a reference to small business — because, apparently, it's good for businesses to do well, but if they do too well and become medium-sized or big, forget it. But even with respect to small business, the idea is that they'd get a trickle down effect if public workers had more money to spend buying goods and going to restaurants. So it's still all about pumping up public employment.

The construction industry is still very weak, and that’s one of the areas where we’ve still seen job losses instead of job gains.

So if we take the steps that I laid out to make sure that we’re not seeing teacher layoffs and we’re not seeing police officer layoffs, and we’re providing small businesses with additional financing and tax breaks for when they hire or if they’re giving raises to their employees; if we refinance housing — or allow homeowners to refinance so they’ve got an extra $3,000 in their pocket so that they can spend money and contribute to further economic growth; if we’re making sure that we’re rebuilding, work that has to be done anyway, deferred maintenance on roads and bridges that could put construction workers back to work — all those things will strengthen the economy, and independent economists estimate it would create an additional million jobs.

Now, you can’t give me a good reason as to why Congress would not act on these items other than politics — because these are traditionally ideas that Democrats and Republicans have supported. So let me be as clear as I can be. The economy needs to be strengthened. That’s why I had a press conference.

I believe that there are a lot of Americans who are hurting right now, which is what I’ve been saying for the last year, two years, three years, what I’ve been saying since I came into office. And the question then is what are we going to do about it? And one of the things that people get so frustrated about is that instead of actually talking about what would help, we get wrapped up in these political games. That’s what we need to put an end to.

So the key right now is for folks — what I’m interested in hearing from Congress and Mr. Romney is what steps are they willing to take right now that are going to make an actual difference. And so far, all we’ve heard are additional tax cuts to the folks who are doing fine, as opposed to taking steps that would actually help deal with the weaknesses in the economy and promote the kind of economic growth that we would all like to see.

I won't parse all that in detail, but I think he stayed in the hole he'd dug for himself: The answer is federal spending to local government. And then there's that man over there he's pretending does not exist: Scott Walker!

No points for originality here. The origin of this for the Obama team may be Romney's 'the poor are doing fine' comment -- where Romney said the middle class is what we have to worry about and that there is a good safety net for the poor.

Let's posit that Obama is as smart as he thinks he is... for a minute.. He is still not smart enough not to appear as an idiot. Maybe he is just so smart that us normal humans, even those of us with triple digit IQs, can't follow the brilliance of his logic. Maybe over the years it will sink in the way General Relativity did, first with the few smart enough to understand it and willing to do the work involved, and then with the rest of us who accept it as probably true now because of its success at making counter intuitive predictions.

Maybe, but I doubt it. The man is an idiot tool of the unions who got him elected and are just out to rape the rest of us for their comfortable and worry free retirements.

Obama says: "Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in. "

WTF? is that Greece-speak for: if only we would print more worthless money and hire all sorts of government workers and give them endless benefits and not worry about silly budgets and math. If only we could increase the government union force. If only we could create an army of middle class government dependency, the democrats could be in power forever. If only we could remove the power of states and force the federal bureaucracy on everyone.”

Obama sees no difference between private and public employment as far as "the economy" is concerned, and if toatal employment is lagging, that can easily be cured by more public hiring, and all this talk about governments not being able to afford it is just a smokescreen, since all the Government has to do is print more money and hand it out to all the local governments to pay their employees with.

Obama has no memory of the Weimar republic, and if he has read about, he thinks it just proves his case, because the Nazi's solved all that, right?.So, all we have to do is what the Nazi's did - without the concentration camps of course.

The contextual background image that exposed our Phoney-in-Chief for the weak con man that he is was provided Tuesday night when Wisconsin voters understood that a solution exists once the Socialist Blood Letters are driven out of the healing the dying patient with Trillions in debts that only postpone a sure death a few more months.

They affirmed Walker who in turn had affirmed Romney saying to cut whole agencies, or consolidate them, and cut Obama's Mass Regulatory Attacks on USA businesses and energy supplies and the patient on the life support will recover.

The smart Dems pre Soro's take over also want back in the door to save the patient's life. They eat off a prosperous USA recovering too.

The private sector provides goods and services that people want and need. If your business doesn't meet the needs or your services suck, you go out of business.

Governmental employees proved services that we may or may not even WANT much less need. If their service sucks we are told to pound sand and give them some more money. The government can't go 'out of business' they can just force you to have more of their unwanted services and pay for them through the nose.

He thinks in terms of socialist "economics", a flying spaghetti monster of bullshit math dependent on people seeing a skyful of crisscrossing dollars, money funneled through fed and state and local and NGO and nonprofit and for profit, a scheme so confusing that each man might think he will get out more than he put in.

Except for the "rich", those heartless bastards, who deserve our scorn. Unless they are Of The Party, then they deserve patronage.

That Obama actually believes small businesses are NOT part of the private sector, and that small businesses are made profitable by public spending, proves he is dangerously and invincibly stupid.

But, more to the point, I think there's a couple of things working here.

First, Barry's been told all his life how smart he is and has been passed along because nobody wanted people to think they were racist. So he really believes it - even though he comes off as one of the most ignorant people in public life I can recall - and thus figures if he's always right, it must be so, if he's signed off on Stimulus, et al., it must be right (it doesn't hurt he has a pack of yes-men around him).

The other springs from his ignorance. All the smart people from Haavahd said this would work, so, again, it must be working - it's just having some trouble coming to fruition because of outside sources. Get past the outside sources and we'll be OK.

He himself doesn't know enough about economics to really know any better. And what he does know comes from the fact that Mommy wasn't the only Commie in the family, apparently.

Our Leaker-in-Chief believes his mission includes sinking all American ships that will possibly aid Iran in its valiant struggle to murder the Jews who escaped the SS exterminations. Persians just do the work better than Germans.

When CNN has turned back to Clinton, and DiFi has joined McCain and Chambless to accuse Benedict Arnold Obama of being a willful traitor ( or is it only those viscious czars that he appointed?), then the end of Obama's career is happening in slow motion before our eyes.

I'm glad you posted the entire exchange, because frankly I thought the right was taking advantage of something said out of context.

No. It was just as bad as they say! It's his "they don't appreciate me" attitude. Hey, you've got food stamps and unemployment, so STFU!

It seems the whole point of the presser was to reinforce his support of teachers, police and firefighters the day after Walker and the citizens so soundly defeated them. I can only imagine the angry phones to POTUS after the WI debacle.

The debate will have to be an Obamedia MSNBS Joke-network experience where Maddow, O'Donnell and Matthews ask the questions. Or a debate with Katie and Matt or possibly the breathlessly pro- Occupy movement Diane Sawyer.

Matthews: President Obama, why do those mean republicans blame you for this mess when it's clearly their fault.

Obama: blah blah blah

Matthews: Romney - Why did you fire all those people? Why are you such an evil capitalist? Tell us your thoughts on abortion. Why did you put your dog on top of the car? Doesn't that act alone disqualify you? How can you say anything negative about Obama? Can't you see he's awesome? Are you some sort of racist?

When the price of oil climbed over $100/barrel in the first quarter this year I earned enough in the market to pay off the mortgage on my house. April and May weren't as much fun when the price of oil dropped to $90. I'm praying for $6/gallon at the pump so I can pay off my condo.

Has there been a commensurate rise in fires, crime and school closings? Hunh.

Let's run Obama through the private sector merit template, since its doing fine. Perhaps we can find some insight as to how things work out there. Consider him the "project manager" of jobs that effect your personal life. You have the ability to hire/fire for that position.

Based on his proven inabilities to troubleshoot/solve problems/perform necessary duties as President:

Saying the public sector is lagging in job growth and is an underperforming part of the economy is like a businessman saying, "The good news is our sales numbers are up but the bad news is we're not spending enough on overhead."

The government is not productive, it's overhead. It's necessary to some degree to keep things working and perform maintenance functions but it's never an end in itself. That's like a business begging its suppliers to raise their costs, to "even things out".

Obama says: "Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government — oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in. "

Of course, if the local and state governments didn't have to send all the tax money to the federal government in the first place, they might have the money to deal with things better. The feds take all our money and then deign to return some of it to us, with conditions so we can only spend it on what they want us to spend it on, i.e. unneeded "high speed" rail from Madison to Milwaukee.

Has there been a commensurate rise in fires, crime and school closings? Hunh."

This is a excellent point. What was his response when the press brought it up? Considering local governments response to a budget crisis generally is to lay off firemen,cops and teachers before making any other cuts, I have to assume the local governments view them as non essential.

The comment reveals that Obama has absolutely no clue about how the actual economy works and his campaign can't connect their arguments into a logical story:

1. Businesses are making obscene profits2. businesses ought be be hiring, instead of hoarding profits3. The Private sector is doing fine4. We're creating lots of private sector jobs5. what is hurting is public employment6. Why can't the Govies afford to hire?7. because tax revenues are way down.8. Why? because the private economy sucks

clueless.

Remember how Team O made McCain choke in 2008 when he said the “fundamentals” of the economy were strong? Well, it’s payback time:

Another former McCain aide was blunter.“We very much look forward watching Team Romney put Obama’s head in a vice over this,” he emailed “What goes around comes around, assholes.”

In 1961 the Kennedy administration ordered a 10% Reduction in Force (RIF), and the Corps of Engineers responded by laying of their field engineers and construction "observers," so the projects went to hell in short order, and the administration hurriedly restored the agency funding.And the Corps employees went around smirking, "Heh, heh, I guess we taught those damn politicians a lesson this time!"

The folks who are hurting, where we have problems and where we can do even better, is small businesses that are having a tough time getting financing; we’ve seen teachers and police officers and firefighters who’ve been laid off — all of which, by the way, when they get laid off spend less money buying goods and going to restaurants and contributing to additional economic growth.

What an idiot. Small business owners need to pay higher current taxes and higher future taxes due to the borrowing so people who are rent seekers can spend money at restaurants and at the mall. Next the Nobel comittee will award Sparky a prize in economics. Gee imagine if those laid off cops and fireman got jobs in the private sector and paid real taxes.

It is kind of forgotten today that the Kennedys ran on a platform of fixing "the missile gap" (that wasn't) and economy in Government by eliminating the waste, fraud, and mismanagement that had been so rife in the Eisenhower administration.

For the sixth year in a row, tuition at the University of Wisconsin’s four-year campuses will go up by the state’s legal maximum of 5.5 percent.The UW Board of Regents voted 17-1 in Milwaukee Thursday to approve the tuition hike, which System President Kevin Reilly said was necessary to partially make up for cuts in state aid.Students at the four-year campuses can plan on budgeting an extra $400 for their tuition during the coming year, with no increase in financial aid.

Heaven forbid they lay off an Administrator or one of these useless womyn's studies faculty members...

The federal government should emphatically NOT worry about printing money. Money the US government prints is not worthless. (If you think that money is worthless, please send any money you have of that variety to me.) Most money in this country is created out of thin air by banks. Depositing a $100 bill in a bank causes the bank to lend (say) $90, which gets deposited, causing someone else to have $90 in their account, which gets lent and deposited, causing someone else to have (say) $81 in their bank account, and so on. For every dollar the government creates, banks effectively end up creating (say) 9. During the banking crisis, banks rightly restricted lending. This effectively reduced the amount of money that exists, which led people to cut spending, which led to reduced hiring, which led to further reduced spending, etc. The only reasonable way out of this problem is for the government to print more money than they take in. Encouraging more lending as Obama suggests is stupid because excessive lending is what started the whole problem to begin with. Furthermore, there is a fundamental difference between money created by banks and money created by the government. The former sort of money is associated with a corresponding private debt. As long as the amount of money the government has created is small compared to the amount of money the banks create, the debt of people as a whole will be near the amount of their savings.

Greece's problem is that they can't print money. Debt is a problem to entities that can't print their own money. In particular, states like California with debt problems have a real problem because they can't print more money.

Both political parties, instead of sufficiently lowering taxes or increasing government spending have mostly chosen to subsidize banks and lending, e.g., by having government sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae buying up or insuring masses of dodgy loans at inflated prices. This is not only greatly unjust and encouraging to crookedness, but exacerbates the economic situation by ensuring that the indebtedness of people remains near the amount of money they have. Otherwise, as loans default as housing prices plummet, people would be less in debt until eventually a much larger fraction of money would be government created money, creating a prosperity that eventually would lead to increased demand and economic recovery.

I have no statistics to back me up, but I strongly suspect that those 450,000 weren't fired. Instead they represent retirements that weren't replaced with new hires. State and local governments all over the country are facing fiscal strictures imposed by the inexorable laws of economics, and reducing the payroll by such attrition is probably the least politically worrisome expedient. The rub is this: The problem grows worse faster than government employees age into retirement, so it becomes a matter of trying to bail out a sinking ship with a sieve.

To rescue our economy from geometrically increasing debt governments local and national are going to have to pruned with a brutal ax as opposed to the delicate little snips used heretofore. Young public-sector workers are going to have to fired, and pension deals are going to have to be altered.

Here are my ideas to help winnow the ranks: --- First, change every holiday taken by government worker, but treated by us normal folk as regular working days to unpaid holidays. --- Second, to what ever level of onerous clerical folderol a particular government operation is current at, double or even triple the workload. Pile it on until a 40 hour work week is 60 hours too short to accomplish the tasks given, until every bureaucrat in the Commerce Department or the EPA is so swamped with red tape and backlog that their performance reports will look like a homeboy gansta's SAT score. Make public sector work so tedious, so mind-numbing, so frustratingly dreadful that no one with any prospects in the private sector would chose a government job. Provide all the necessary incentives to make them flee the public sector in droves to snatch up any private sector work available. The only public sector that deserves the best and the brightest is the Armed Forces. In every other branch we need ever increasing levels of incompetence and laziness. Consequently the bright and industrious public sector workers will relocate to private business and industry where their talents will build the GDP instead of consuming it.

all of which, by the way, when they get laid off spend less money buying goods and going to restaurants and contributing to additional economic growth. Whoever he takes the money from to pay these public workers will have that much "less money buying goods and going to restaurants and contributing to additional economic growth".And please tell me that Obama is talking a keynesian stimulus using borrowed money. If he was a keynesian he wouldn't be talking about raising taxes on anyone.

The biggest problem I see for business is lack of investment and risk taking. The reason for that is that nobody who actually lives in that world - outside the rent seeking coalitions - believes that this guy or his people understand much of anything. They see a bull in the china shop, dangerously confused and wounded. Political hacks willing to do or say anything to get through today's crisis.

Nobody knows what they will destroy next, so they just hide in the corner waiting for it leave or fall over dead.

My plan has the added benefit of taxing the life expectancy of government works. After 30 years of the kind of harried brouhaha, quadruplicate form filing, and attenuated redoublings of effort I have in mind the average careerist bureaucrat will just be able to crawl from the retirement dinner to his deathbed, thus saving billions in pension liabilities.

Stephen A. Meigs wrote:Depositing a $100 bill in a bank causes the bank to lend (say) $90, which gets deposited, causing someone else to have $90 in their account, which gets lent and deposited, causing someone else to have (say) $81 in their bank account, and so on.Not quite the way it works. The original $100 is liability to the bank. The $90 it loans out, plus interest, is considered an asset to the bank.

And one of the things that people get so frustrated about is that instead of actually talking about what would help, we get wrapped up in these political games. That’s what we need to put an end to.

So the key right now is for folks — what I’m interested in hearing from Congress and Mr. Romney is what steps are they willing to take right now that are going to make an actual difference.

What steps is Mr. Romney willing to take right now? What steps can he take right now? He's a private citizen, not a government official. In what way is including Romney in that question not a political game?

We simply need to pass some legislation redefining the public sector to be nonunion and having the pay and benefits of all positions limited to the average of that in private sector equivalents. That is the only way it can be fair. What would be the argument against that? How can you argue that the public sector creating no wealth should be better paid than those who are paying for them?

Then as a public employee, your interests are in line with the private sector. If they are making more, you will too. You would have an incentive to help businesses grow and be more profitable. Helping each other: what a strange dynamic for people living in the same country.

This is a winning position with the electorate that would also have enormous savings for government budgets everywhere.

The fact that he doesn't seem to understand this basic truth is the most devastating comment on his ignorance. The problem is that too many people's jobs are overhead. They may not understand it either.

It's one reason why so many doctors are going to a cash model practice and dropping Medicare and all insurance. As payments drop, getting rid of the billing department, pure overhead, gets more attractive. I was surprised to see how this has grown.

The private sector IS doing fine by measures leftists use. It is worried, distracted, unstable, cowering, under punishment, either contracting or specializing on government doles, intimidated, headed for extinction or nationalization, and conditions like that. By leftist measures this is the most successful US federal executive the world has seen, with respect to economic policy and accomplishments. Leftist measures appear stupid of inept only to non-leftists.

Terry, that is the way money works in our fractional reserve banking system. Central-bank created money gets multiplied by the money multiplier, which is the inverse of the reserve ratio at banks. This is standard Econ 101. What's more, it is totally sensible theory. You can argue like the Modern Monetary Theorists that in practice the reserve ratios always get determined by the banks, or that bank-created money should be called something other than money, say, to emphasize its unique association with private debt by discouraging its conflation with central-bank-created currency, but that's all besides the point.

I'm beginning to think that, where street smarts are the coin of the realm, he is really and deeply stupid.

I'll spot him his fancy education; I'll even let him postulate that the forever deep sixed transcripts show grades which reveal an uncommon intelligence. (Have to spend some time with the Choom Gang to really believe that).

But down where the rubber meets the road and leadership qualities and street smarts are essential, this man is a babbling idiot.

John M Auston said... Obama is not that hard to understand if you just focus on the fact that he is the first American President to have grown up NOT experiencing the traditional American upbringing life experience.

Before we can really change government, the permanent institutionalized government, some massive executive lard needs trimming. In an article by Paul C. Light in the WSJ, he describes this layered lard this way:

The rest of government is just as densely packed. Research I conducted shows that between 1961 and 2009, the number of executive layers—or ranks by title—at an average cabinet-level agency jumped from seven to 18, even as the number of executives per layer swelled from 451 to 2,600. If Congress and the president want greater accountability from the bureaucracy, they should cut the standard reporting chain in half and reverse the recent proliferation of lower layers occupied by chiefs of staff, deputy chiefs of staff, team leaders and management-support specialists.

Albeit, even if you are to consider that lower level GS graded employees perform some useful service to the taxpaying public, you cannot say the same for the inverted managementpyramid. The vast majority of senior executives have never done any of the work they oversee themselves ... so they write rule upon rule from a void. Then when they can, they enforce those rules as if law, even if the underlying vague legislation says nothing of the kind anywhere in it. They are powerful ... "rule making" holds that a violator is guilty until he/she proves their own innocence. If they can afford it.

We can elect a good Congress and good President, with great intentions, but their first order of business will be to trim the rule makers and the executive lard that values their "processes" highly and service product, if any, not so much.

I'm speaking from experience on the inside having to deal with the know nothings, who numbers increase annually as certainly as spring follows winter. Among them, the first liar doesn't stand a chance.

seems to me putting federal money into state and local bureacracies will only increase the debt load of those same governments--they will have to pay the benefits and retirements of those workers--nothing productive about Mr Obama's solution--it will continue to overburden state and local governments.

The simple fact is that the man we collectively hired to do a job he assured us he was capable of doing can no longer be defended for his incompetency. Nor should he be rewarded another 4 years to figure it out. We don't have four years to spare.

The more 'loose ends" he takes credit for tidying up (Iraq, OBL, Afghanistan) the less the "no changing horses in mid-stream" claim can save him, as it did W. His few accomplishments that were> a net positive actually make his re-election less necessary.

We need a financial literate to take charge now, and Romney, for all his perceived faults, is that guy.

bagoh20 saysWe simply need to pass some legislation redefining the public sector to be nonunion and having the pay and benefits of all positions limited to the average of that in private sector equivalents. That is the only way it can be fair. What would be the argument against that? How can you argue that the public sector creating no wealth should be better paid than those who are paying for them?

That's not a bad idea, unless it's premised on the idea expressed in the last sentence - that the public sector creates no wealth. There are public sector jobs that create wealth, or at least (and perhaps more importantly) create and preserve the underpinnings of a society that generates wealth. You can't have a working market economy without a working court system to enforce contracts, for example, and you need police and firemen to protect property and individuals. You also need working roads and water systems to have a basic modern society. And the scientists working at places like the NIH, NSF or at state universities aren't just sitting around doing nothing of value. If fact, there are a lot of public-sector jobs that do more for a functioning society than a lot of private-sector jobs. That's why a research scientist who works for a public institution makes more in salary than someone who works in the stock room of a private firm, for example.

My views on public sector unionization largely track those of the greatest President of the 20th Century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But don't turn a proper respect for the private sector into contempt for the public sector or a fantasy that you don't need a working and strong public sector for a modern economy to work. The US has prospered as a mixed economy since Alexander Hamilton published his Report on Manufactures. Don't kid yourself into thinking that everything the government does is damaging to the general economy or a net loss to society. That's just bumper-sticker economics.

And while most political gaffes are forgotten within a week, this one will leave a mark. Saying something like this when your adversary is Mitt Romney (as opposed to someone like Rick Santorum) isn't good for your prospects.

Of course there is a lot of public work that is necessary, although it could be argued that very little of it has to be publicly financed to get done. My point was that similar work in the public should not be paid much better than in the private which it is. You compared research scientist to clerk, but that's not equally paid anywhere, and shouldn't be.

bagoh20, thanks for the response. But your original comment, and others one hears from conservatives here and elsewhere, implied that public sector jobs don't create wealth or value. That's something I'll always push back on, though obviously some jobs of that type don't do much for society. Anyone who has dealt with a lazy and officious DMV clerk can attest to that, but that doesn't mean we don't need a DMV.

Regarding public work and public financing, I'm not sure what your point is. By definition, if public work is going to be done, it has to be financed somehow and even if one outsources certain state tasks (like a full voucher system for public schools, for example), it's still going to be paid for by public financing, either by taxes or borrowing. If your point is that there's too much borrowing, that's a different point but either way if the government is going to pay for something, the money has to come from somewhere.

And on the general point of tying public sector salaries to similar private sector ones, be careful what you wish for and how far you go with that. There are lots of public sector attorneys (like prosecutors and in-house attorneys at important government entities) that would likely get a pay raise in that context and one can argue that people who manage big government enterprises (like the Post Office) should be paid like executives at similarly-sized corporations. Don't assume pay equalization = pay cuts.

Somefeller. Just a tip. Do not use the USPO as a positive example of Govt

USPS is losing $1 billion a month (so far) this year.

Obviously, they need to hire more people, which is what the "doin' fine" private sector does when losing... A BILLION A MONTH of taxpayer money!. My local branch is so thick with stupid I avoid it whenever possible. I've FedExed in-town and local mailings before.

Somefeller. Just a tip. Do not use the USPO as a positive example of Govt

Michael, I wasn't using the USPO as a positive example of government. (Though I also avoid bashing them too much - transporting paper to anywhere the country for the price of a postage stamp isn't a terrible thing, particularly for rural dwellers.) I chose that example specifically to show the dangers of arguing for some sort of pay equalization. If one argues that senior government workers should be paid in a manner similar to public sector workers who manage similar amounts of employees (not an unreasonable metric), then the counterargument can be - great, let's look at sectors of government that employ a lot of people, like the Post Office. And let's give raises to everyone that manages lots of postal workers, to line them up with managers who manage similar amounts of employees at Fortune 500 companies. I suspect that is not the solution bagoh20 or you would probably want.

Once again, while some public employees are paid more than their private sector counterparts, I'm not sure that is true in most circumstances, particularly at the state or local level. Senior federals, maybe, and even then it would be worth seeing what they specifically are doing. I'm happy to pay a senior intelligence analyst in DC a lot more than a senior market researcher at a corporation (two jobs that have more in common than one might think), for example.

There are DMVs and DMVs. Arizona DOT is that state's equivalent and the contrast with California is amazing. It doesn't have to be the last hope of the stupid. The office in Tucson is run like a private company. The smog test station is across the street and you drive in and then out in about 15 minutes with the results sent to DMV electronically. No pain.

Of course the private sector is doing "fine" to Obama. According to him, via Jeremiah Wright, his hateful leader, all these "problems" are merely caused by whitey deliberately holding everyone else, but especially black men, down. Those whiteys in the private sector are just deliberately hurting the economy to hurt poor old President Affirmative Action.

So, after the spanking/repudiation in last week's WI recall election, some legislators think it's a good idea to raise the minimum wage to $10?

How come no conservative talking head ever points out that most union contracts are based on the minimum wage and the unions get an increase and in this instance government workers would get a raise and your property taxes, hell any tax they could think of will go up to pay for this?

bagoh20 said...We simply need to pass some legislation redefining the public sector to be nonunion and having the pay and benefits of all positions limited to the average of that in private sector equivalents. That is the only way it can be fair. What would be the argument against that? How can you argue that the public sector creating no wealth should be better paid than those who are paying for them?

President Romney with a republican congress can immediately one day one accomplish that. All it would take would be for the president and congress to make it explicitly clear that the US Government does not,will not be the guarantor of last resort for state and municipal bonds. Once it is understood that there is no full faith and credit implicit guarantee the municipal general obligation bond market will pretty much freeze. The risk premium will be such they won't be able to issue them. And without the bonds even the bluest and dimmest of the blue's governors, mayors, legislators and councilmen will get religion and cut PEU salaries, benefits, pensions and collective bargaining rights and a substantial cut back on other spending.

In your state, CA, the budget deficit is now 16bn. If Sacramento couldn't raise 16bn in the bond markets at rates the state in theory might be able to pay back the legislature would have to pass an immediate emergency 16bn in tax hikes which even in the most progressive areas of the state wouldn't fly. At that point that gives CA to go begging to Congress for the money ( not a chance of that happening either) or cut the spending immediately. Congress can hasten this at the national level by repelling the tax exempt of state and municipal bonds.

You make a cogent argument but there is the issue of scalability. Not everything scales well. As for paying civil servants private sector wages that would a great idea even if in many instances the compensention would be higher than the current compensation provided the same relative ease of getting rid of incompetents and deadwood available to the private sector management is given to the public sector management.

The USPS is not a Government agency anymore, but some sort of Government "front" organization. And around here at least, the attitude and service improved 100% when that change took place. The USPS actually works pretty good now.

We still have the State DMV, but also private DMV contractor firms that provide excellent service. You pay $10 for a license renewal that is free at the State DMV office, but that is well worth it.

However, somefeller, we can do without the Government researchers who publish studies one month alarming the citizens about the dangers of consuming tablesalt, and the next month about the dangers to our systems of salt deficiency.

"provided the same relative ease of getting rid of incompetents and deadwood available to the private sector management is given to the public sector management."

The problem is not just the "ease" getting rid of public sector deadwood, it is the motivation. In the private sector it is understood you have to make money or else you go out of business and *everyone* loses their job. There is no such comparable pressure in the public sector, which is why collective bargaining for public empolyee unions has been such a disaster for the public fisc.

This is one of the strongest threads I can remember -- a great job by just about every commenter, and there's very little left to be added.

I'll just point out one more little detail:

Obama: "...small businesses that are having a tough time getting financing..."

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I have two banks fighting with one another to give my small company equipment loans at the absurdly low rate of 3.5%.

We're having a tough time because a member of the socialist New Party was elected president three years ago and decided to spend trillions of dollars of our children's and grandchildren's money on his political patrons while demonizing and waging war on us and our customers (small, midsize, and large manufacturers). And the fact that we had to cut a check to the IRS equal to about a fourth of everything we made last year didn't help either.

Stupid feckless socialist son of a bitch. November cannot come soon enough.

PEU's exasperate the public finance problem but are not the sole cause of the problem. Getting rid of them makes the problem more tractable but in of itself will not solve the problem. Government like people also has a Peter Principle. The issue at heart is does government attempt to solve nearly every problem when it can't or does the public finally come to the realization the effective government has a useful and effective outer limit and that beyond that limit it doesn't solve problems and instead creates problems and costs that cannot be born by the taxpayers for an extended length of time without resulting in ruin. Greece has reached that point. We are not so far behind.

The extreme other end of the liberal insistence we need government for everything is the rabid idealogue conservative argument that we need government for nothing - save whatever Heroes in Uniform - soldiers, cops, fireman - demand.

Ideally, we need a mimimum level of government in which Heroes in Uniform are a small fraction of the overall Fed, State, or local government workforce.

We need people that work on the investments in US infrastructure the government funds - highways, basic R&D, navigable harbors and rivers, an internet and smart phone system, an air traffic control system, common standards set in commerce, telecomms. We have to have oversight of certain agricultural and industrial sectors. We need to ensure safe and adequate public water supplies, sanitation. We have to invest for the future with schools. We need trade officials, diplomats, we want our parks and set aside for the public lands - managed and able to be enjoyed.

The extreme other end of the liberal insistence we need government for everything is the rabid idealogue conservative argument that we need government for nothing - save whatever Heroes in Uniform - soldiers, cops, fireman - demand.

Ideally, we need a mimimum level of government in which Heroes in Uniform are a small fraction of the overall Fed, State, or local government workforce.

We need people that work on the investments in US infrastructure the government funds - highways, basic R&D, navigable harbors and rivers, an internet and smart phone system, an air traffic control system, common standards set in commerce, telecomms. We have to have oversight of certain agricultural and industrial sectors. We need to ensure safe and adequate public water supplies, sanitation. We have to invest for the future with schools. We need trade officials, diplomats, we want our parks and set aside for the public lands - managed and able to be enjoyed.

My bank is loaning me money at 290bps. Absurdly low. And other banks also want my business as well. And I am also a small business. Not because I am handsome, charming and witty but because (no doubt like your business) my company has an absurdly strong balance sheet relative to its size and loan line requirements. However that can only happen if the business has been in business for a number of years and has been consistently profitable and the owners retain a considerable amount of equity in the bussiness. Raising taxes on small businesses and adding additional expenses just simply makes harder to earn enough after tax profit to increase the retained earnings to the point banks wants to loan you money. That is what Obama and his merry band of Marxist idiots don't get and that no one goes in to business with the sole purpose of hiring people, that is a byproduct of the business of the business which is to make money.

Public schools were invented by the Protestant majority in the 19th century because Catholic immigrants were building their own religious schools. They then tried to require all children to attend the public schools. Those laws persist in a few states like Oregon, which tried to ban home schooling a few years ago.

The schools now are run for the benefit of the teachers' unions.

Theodore White went to Boston Latin School, which had rigorous criteria for admission. His father was a tailor. Now, those schools, like those in New York City that used to be selective., are banned.

cubanbob - I agree with you of course but PEU's and CB have made the problem significantly worse because they turned government workers into a powerful special interest group. This went hand in hand with the Dems needing to replace their power base in private sector unions when those declined as a share of the workforce.

That's becuase they don't. You seem to be conflating important with creating wealth. Not so!

A fire department, for example is a deadweight loss--at best you're paying a bunch of guys to sit around, at worst they keep your wealth that got created some other way from going up in smoke. This is a very necessary function, whether it's done publicly or privately, but it's not wealth-creating.

Gary Rosen said...cubanbob - I agree with you of course but PEU's and CB have made the problem significantly worse because they turned government workers into a powerful special interest group. This went hand in hand with the Dems needing to replace their power base in private sector unions when those declined as a share of the workforce.

6/9/12 4:26 PM

As I said earlier a President Romney and a Republican Congress can put the kibosh on the PEU's instantly if they have the stones to make it explicitly clear that state and municipal bonds do not have an implied full faith and credit backing of the United States. Once the muni market has The Come To Jesus Moment it will reprice the yields needed to be paid for new issuances and the state and local issuers for the most part won't be able to issue them at a price they can hope to ever repay (general obligation bonds). That alone will force the states and municipalities to deal with the PEU's and that will be the only way the state and local governments will acquire the stones to curb the PEU's and the excessive spending because that much more in taxes they don't have a prayer in hell of raising. An added feature of doing so is that the states and their subdivisions will rebel at having to pay for federal mandates imposed on them which they bear the costs of which will force Congress to get serious about a lot of the spending by buck passing it imposes on the states and municipalities.

We will find out in less than a month about the buck passing to some degree when the Supreme Court issues its ruling on Obamacare. Everyone focuses on the individual mandate but the lawsuit filed by the 26 states also challanges the Medicaid expansion and the unfunded additional mandate imposed on the states by the bill. Even if the court upholds the bill if things keep going as they are one or more states will call the fed's bluff and opt of Medicaid. They simply won't be able to afford the further expansion and the taxpayers of that state or states may well decide the amount of FICA tax collected in those states tasked to Medicaid isn't worth raising local taxes even higher. That will put the feds in a hell of a jam, withhold the funds from those states from the FICA collected in them and risk another constitutional argument in the SCOTUS (and possibly lose) or simply administer and Medicaid in those states directly solely from the FICA taxes collected in them. If that were to be the case then its simply because a race for practically every state to dump Medicaid and turn it over to the feds. That will certainly go a long way towards solving state and local financial burdens.

That's becuase they don't. You seem to be conflating important with creating wealth. Not so!

================Except many public sector jobs do!!

Yes, it is true that while fireman, cops, soldiers and customs people and Standards bureaucrats create nothing - they create the conditions where private enterprise people can do business better.When natural disaster-prone states wanted to grow wealthier with more people, more industry, more home construction - government was enlisted to do the basic investment in infrastructure and insurance underwriting that allowed The Great Men of Private Enterprise to build Florida real estate empires, geometrically expand commerce on evil Gummint funded railroads, intercoastal highways, and with government backed insurance on their investments. American agriculture has been deeply dependent on government to increase productivity and access to markets.Government roads, bridges, power grids.

Where conservatives realy go astray is focusing on entitlements to parasites and extrapolating that to demonizing all government as somehow impeding those heroic private enterprise paragons on irrigated Arizona farms or real estate magnates that built with government isurance on former swaps in the middle of nowhere until the evil Gummint Interstate Highway was built a mile away.

And lets be honest about Heroes in Uniform - America gained nothing for the War for Iraqi Freedom Lovers. The Pentagon is rife with waste and Beltway Bandit ripoffs. More cops does not mean less crime at a certain tipping point...just lots of extra cops.And sometimes a single evil gummint building construction regulation or code that prevents fires is worth 200 extra firefighter heroes sitting around in firehouses.

I can't comment on other states but in Florida, specifically South Florida was developed by private investors using private funds. Henry Flagler built the railroad to Miami. John Collins bought the land and developed Miami Beach and David Merrick did the same in Coral Gables. The Graham Family built Miami Lakes.

They built the infrastructure in their developments. And currently any developer with any project of significance pays tremendous impact fees that cover the public infrastructure tie ins.

Hagar said... The USPS is not a Government agency anymore, but some sort of Government "front" organization. And around here at least, the attitude and service improved 100% when that change took place. The USPS actually works pretty good now.

You realize they have a negative cash flow in the multiple billions a year and are weeks from bankruptcy?

They have far too many locations, too many workers, too many work rules...

On the other hand, Germany's Deutsche Post is private. You know them as DHL.

Yessir, it does: It is generally called the Senior Executive Service [SES]...appointees one and all.

For an example, just visualize that debauched GSA senior honcho in the hot tub with wine.

6/9/12 5:04 PM

All the more reason to give the president and the cabinet and agency heads the authority to fire at will any federal civil servant.They are few and easily held accountable by the public and by Congress. Indeed Congress should have the authority to fire at will agency heads and cabinet officers by majority vote if the president refuses to act when they fail to do their ministerial functions correctly. Senior management should have no excuses and those charged with oversight should not have any excuses either.

To be fair to the USPS its in an impossible place. its tasked to make money but it is required to provide services that make it incapable of earning money. Its a GSE that only Washington can create. In Europe GSE's are supposed to break even and make some money and are allowed to do so.

So is NASA. Somehow we are supposed to perform Muslim outreach but that takes away from the global warming hoax and don't even talk about going into space. Bruce WIllis won't even help us with that anymore.

In a line of 20 at the PO no postal service employees emerge fromthe back to take our money. They walk through without making eye contact but they keep moving. In a grocery store when the lines get even a little long the PA system lights up calling employees up front to take our money. Notice the difference? Work rules. The PO is the modern equivqlent of the featherbedded railroaders.

n a line of 20 at the PO no postal service employees emerge fromthe back to take our money. They walk through without making eye contact but they keep moving. In a grocery store when the lines get even a little long the PA system lights up calling employees up front to take our money. Notice the difference? Work rules. The PO is the modern equivalent of the featherbedded railroaders.

Yes, this. The people who actually drive routes do their work well and predictably so, in my experience. But you step into an actual post office at your peril.

To do what? National strategic goal (which includes directly or by implication national tactical decisions) is the operative question. That, and nothing else, dictates need for Heroes in Uniform.

Foundation mission of government is provide clean water and plant trees. Defense is not less than 50% individual responsibility and the rest is government-maintained/callable regimented formations.

Uniforms per se are inconsequential. Anyone can make/don a uniform. The key elements of regimented formations are, first, the NCO Corps and, second, the Officer Corps.

Large-scale conflicts are won by regimented formations, not by citizen irregulars/partisans/"Minutemen"/etc.

We're I a member of the regime trying to rule (not govern, rule), my worry would not be voters, for they are easily duped, trumped or ignored. It would be the millions of experienced/capable NCOs and Officers trained in a decade-long crucible of hot war. Not propaganda war, not political war, not Alinsky-Bolshevik maneuvering, but rather, small unit tactics and large unit movement to combat in a shooting war. Those people would worry me, did I belong to this regime of soi-dissant rulers who disparage Americans and their ethics.

You know, Cedarford, aside from your other issues, you are so freaking predictable, repetitive and tendentious. Aside from how you feel about the Jeeeeews, nigras and other parasites and their enablers/masters, we also by now know that no such thing as a hero or a freedom loving foreigner exists, and we don't really need to hear your hobbyhorses mounted and ridden at such length EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. YOU. POST.

Could you do me a favor? Just for a week, don't stop posting, don't stop thinking or feeling how you think or feel. Just try this: Try not to post the same things you always say. Try not to type anything that isn't new.

Actually to be fair I have reread and you were not that bad this time. But, you see, just a little of that "heroes" stuff, for instance, goes a long way. Like aniseed in a cake, as Stephen Maturin would say. Other than that there is a certain density in your text. Try more brevity, and more paragraphs, perhaps.

Believe it I am actually not shitting on you today, I'm trying to help...no doubt one is as offensive as the other...I'll crawl back under my rock in the cemetery in Prague now...